Our judiciary has come under heavy attack for judgment delivered by the Supreme Court in recent cases of contentious governorship election results, especially in Akwa Ibom, Delta, Abia and Rivers states. Some leaders and sympathisers of the ruling All Progressives Congress have resorted to the use of unkind words against the judiciary.
Chairman of the APC, John Odigie-Oyegun, reportedly called for an investigation of the judiciary. “I still find the judgment on the Rivers State governorship election totally astonishing. There is something fundamentally wrong in the judiciary. We have lost very important resource-rich states to the PDP. No matter how crude oil prices have fallen, it is still the most important revenue earner for the country,” he was quoted as saying.
But the APC chairman quickly denied that he said the judiciary should be investigated.
Also, the governorship candidate of the APC in Rivers State, Dakuku Peterside, accused Governor Nyesom Wike of “confessing” that he had contacts with the Justices of the Supreme Court.
Peterside had said, “It is obvious that the decision of the Supreme Court on the Rivers State Election was not a product of justice. Instead, it was a product of compromise and orchestrated contrivance to legalise electoral violence, rigging and, in turn, reward injustice. This calls for serious introspection by our Judiciary and judicial officers.”
Even the chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee on Anti-corruption, Prof Itse Sagay,ý was quoted as saying: “The judgments are very perverse, particularly relating to Akwa Ibom and Rivers States. Everybody knows that there were no elections in those two states. Everybody knows that people like Wike climbed into the governorship seat over dead bodies and over the blood of human beings. There were no elections, they wrote the results; the evidence is there.
“So, what the Supreme Court has done is to set the clock of electoral excellence and fairness and credibility back by, I do not want to say a thousand years, but certainly it is taking us back to where we were before Jega came in and sanitised the system.
“We are going to have a primitive and barbaric electoral culture that says ‘kill as much as you can, destroy as much as you can, create as much catastrophe, but if you can find yourself on that seat, you are confirmed, regardless of the means by which you got there.’ That is a very major setback to democracy and the rule of law.”
Ironically, the same judiciary (Supreme Court) had ruled in favour of the APC in the governorship cases of Lagos, Benue and Ogun States, among others. The same day that the Supreme Court ruled on the Rivers State case was the same day it ruled on the Ogun case in favour of the APC. After judgment was delivered in favour of the candidates of the APC in these states, there were no comments from the APC candidates condemning the judiciary or its decisions. The Peoples Democratic Party candidates who lost the cases did not vilify the judiciary. It was only at the Appeal Court stage where the court in Lagos upheld the election on the ground that the card reader was not compulsory but cancelled the election in Rivers State, based on the card reader, that some commentators raised eyebrows over the court having two different views on the issue of the card reader in two different states. Fortunately, the Supreme Court delivered the same judgement on the issue of the card reader across the states.
However, the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Mahmud Mohammed, fired back at critics during the recent valedictory court session held in honour of a retiring Justice of the Supreme Court, Justice Muhammad Muntaka-Coomassie in Abuja.
Justice Mohammed said, “The Nigerian judiciary, though constantly striving to redress wrongs and tilt the balance in favour of that which is right, has recently had to face the backlash of misguided opinions fashioned without due consideration of the law and rationale for the system of government that we operate.
“The judiciary is duty bound to act in accordance with the dictates of the law as it stands and not as critics would like it to be. In this sense, naive idealism is but a pale limitation of legal certainty.”
The Nigerian Bar Association came to the defence of the judiciary. It said, “The NBA condemns in its entirety the generalisation and/or categorisation of the judiciary as being corrupt and an impediment to the zero corruption policy of the present administration.”
If there is a party that should be grateful to the judiciary in Nigeria, it should be the APC. When Chief Olusegun Obasanjo held sway as a civilian President that organised elections, which he described as “do-or-die,” and made the PDP to win election almost in every state of the federation, it was the judiciary that came to the rescue. The APC, through one of the parties that formed it (Action Congress of Nigeria), was able to reclaim states like Edo, Osun and Ekiti, courtesy of the judiciary.
In addition, the current Minister of Transportation, Mr Rotimi Amaechi, may be said to be the highest beneficiary of the judgment of the judiciary since 1999. He holds the record as the first person in Nigeria who became a governor without contesting for the office. After winning the Rivers State’s party primaries for the 2007 governorship election, Obasanjo pushed him aside and replaced him with Mr Celestine Omehia. Omehia won and was sworn in as governor, but the Supreme Court threw out Omehia and declared that Amaechi was the rightful PDP candidate for the election. So Amaechi became the governor of Rivers without contesting for the office. For such a person to therefore condemn the judgment of the Judiciary is “the unkindest cut of all.”
The fact that the APC is the ruling party makes the issue of condemnation of the judiciary worse. As the ruling party, the APC should be the chief protector of the court. For when the court is rubbished, we cease to have a democracy. It is the judiciary that makes us not to have a dictatorship. The court makes it possible that there is stability in the land by discouraging the people from resorting to self-help. When people lose hope in the judiciary and take laws into their hands, the country will descend into anarchy.
The APC is in control of 22 states: almost double the 13 states controlled by the PDP. The APGA controls one state. The 2015 election was a very good one for the APC. It was the court that ensured that when the party was in the opposition, it was not asphyxiated by the ruling party.
The Supreme Court Justices are human beings. They are not infallible. But their judgment is final. There may be some bad eggs among them, like every other sector in Nigeria, but the institution of the judiciary must never be rubbished by politicians who only want favourable judgments. A party or a politician cannot always win court judgments all the time. Victories and losses must be accepted as realities in politics. When a loss comes, the party or politician takes it in good faith and goes back to start planning again.
The attitude of politicians and their sympathisers to the issue of electoral judgments should align with a recent comment of the President of the Nigerian Bar Association, Mr Augustine Alegeh. Who said, “We believe that the Supreme Court has considered all the facts and did what it believes is right. All affected parties should accept the Supreme Court decision because it is the apex court of the land.”
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